Sound, Class, and Sound Clash Over Bangkok

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Urbanologists and field-recording enthusiasts alike will appreciate the third episode of Ben Tausig‘s “Bangkok Is Ringing” series, part of the ongoing podcast from canopycanopycanopy.com (aka Triple Canopy). The episode (MP3) peers up above the city’s impoverished streets to a space reserved for those who can afford it, a space distinguished in large part by how it shields its customers from the noise of everyday life. That space is the Skytrain, pictured here.

[audio:http://canopycanopycanopy.com/static/0000/3000/Bangkok_Is_Ringing__Episode_3.mp3|titles=”Bangkok Is Ringing Episode 3″|artists=Ben Tausig]

Tausig describes the “Rising” series as “exploring the politics of urban sound in Bangkok and beyond, through first-person reporting, field recordings, and analysis.” The documentary audio in episode three focuses on nine rapid beats, which signify that the doors of the Skytrain are closing, after which, as Tausig describes it, “a deeper silence sets in.” The entry emphasizes the class differences between those who can and cannot afford passage, a passage, as he puts it, “sealed from the street’s eternal drone.”

Of course, there is no such thing a true silence — one range of noises is exchanged for another, and the Skytrain indeed has its own soundscape, marked by “mild music” and polite chatter. Descriptive explanatory text and interviews (there’s a particularly memorably moment when his recording device is mistaken for a Nintendo Game Boy) mingle with original field recordings of the city and its elevated transportation system for a compelling portrait-in-audio of Bangkok in transition.

Tausig, a PhD student in ethnomusicology at NYU, blogs at weirdvibrations.com, where he expands on the theme of the piece, writing of the experience of Bangkok’s citizens:

They want to shop and work in spaces parallel to those that have been overrun, where sensation has become for them overwhelming. So new channels are carved. The city becomes sedimented, with layers corresponding to something like class. Money, or lack of it, enforces access to these layers, but so do composure and habit.

Skytrain image, above, from wikimedia.org. Street-level image below by Tausig:

CC, the CBC, and What We Talk About When We Talk About “Noncommercial”

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Just over a year ago, in September 2009, Creative Commons published the lengthy Defining “Noncommercial”: A Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” (PDF, creativecommons.org), which I have only just begun to read.

I’ve always wondered what qualifies as “commercial use” when it comes to Creative Commons music. The pressing concern for netlabels, which often release music under the Creative Commons license, is: Does having a blog about music, and streaming or providing download links to non-commercial-use CC music, count as “commercial” if the blog features advertising? How about podcasts, or radio shows, that also have advertising? There are currently no ads on Disquiet.com, so it’s a moot point here, from a practical perspective. (This site is licensed by CC “permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.”)

But from a philosophical perspective, it’s a pressing concern. The reason: An apparent decision by the CBC to not use CC music on its podcasts has brought the issue to the fore. There’s good coverage and comment-discussion at michaelgeist.ca, techdirt.com, and createdigitalmusic.com.

An overview of the September 2009 Defining “Noncommercial” survey, in the form of a press release (creativecommons.org), provides some initial insight, stating that websites on which advertising is in the realm of “cost recovery” (“to cover hosting costs”), as well as “use by not-for-profits,” is not viewed as “commercial” as much as are more clearly for-profit uses.

The forums at Creative Commons appear to be underutilized (forum.creativecommons.org), and as of this writing there’s no mention of the CBC issue at twitter.com/creativecommons either, so let’s look forward to a formal response from the organization.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Looked at Rapstar to see if Japan-made game features any DJ Krush (no but there's Premiere, 9th Wonder, Blaze); found this: tweetbattles.com #
  • New 75th-birthday edition of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, 200-page hardcover book including score, CD, additional material: http://is.gd/fTfCL #
  • Morning sounds: various electric hums, faraway cars in motion, nearby bus, footsteps. #
  • Think my parents are at the Magnus Lindberg concert at New York Philharmonic. I'm receiving cellphone jpgs of stage full of junkyard metal . #
  • "Filling in crosswords won't make you Walt Mossberg." Fun chalk-graffiti video a friend of mine shot: http://is.gd/fSaZo via @mrscobra #
  • .@pbailey You'd think if Apple were serious about HTML5 it'd put an iota of its massive coding infrastructure to work on making basic tools. in reply to pbailey #
  • Basic answer to "Are there iPad-friendly netlabels?": A direct MP3 link will inelegantly stream; no netlabels seem to have implemented HTML5 #
  • RT @osakimandias There is nothing in the world like the sound of a low-bypass jet engine. It's like music for aviation geeks. #fleetweek #
  • RT @mmaddencomics On Shannon Wheeler's website you can filter the strips by "penultimate silent panel": http://bit.ly/cG2dRN #
  • RT @harkaway Deep night's orchestra; tenuous sirens and dogs, wind in autumn streets. #idontusuallydohaikubutimanewdad via @greatdismal #
  • In the future, outdated technology doesn't just become art; art becomes technology. New @tate Muybridgizer app & @newmuseum GysinDream app. #
  • Little cold this morning for birds, yet I hear birds. Oh, it's not birds; it's Tiffany Defoe's sax playing through headphones on my floor. #
  • AudioGourmet: "Bandcamp saying you have to pay? This means our free download credits ran out. So we have done back up on Internet Archive." #
  • Pumpkin ice cream. The dish, straight up; the shop, a medley of industrial refrigeration drones. #
  • .@hecanjog By iPad-friendly I mean netlabels that stream from iPad's Safari with ease the way they do on regular old computer browsers. in reply to hecanjog #
  • Anyone have a list handy of iPad-friendly netlabels? #
  • My copy of new Lesser/Wobbly/Matmos album has arrived. Now I need to make my way across town to get it. It's like The Warriors, but ambient. #
  • My inchoate iPad thoughts: alarmingly closed protocol, novelty-consumerist propensity, poor wifi. And a vibrant tech-art developer community #
  • Not sure which is better in Osmos: the potential to become an "Ambient Master," or the title of its "Chief Aesthetic Officer." #ipad #ios #
  • Wondering if that poor town saddled with wind-farm noise pollution also "celebrates" Fleet Week. #
  • First sonic evidence of Fleet Week, plane rushing overhead like a serrated cloud. #
  • Osmos:Bloom::Soderbergh's Solaris:Tarkovsky's Solaris (that's not a criticism) #
  • Radio after my own heart: Hugh Levison's 8-minute, 2004 piece about his newborn's "snorts, bangs, clicks, and trumpeting" http://is.gd/fPSGG #
  • My brief review of new Bad Plus (Never Stop): no covers (a first), no vocalist (been a while), an addictive title track: http://is.gd/fPPWu #
  • When the iPad comes with a front-facing camera, all conversations on it will be Bill Viola videos. #
  • Current fave thing to do with iPad is run Circle Cutter in RJ Voyager's Doppelganger and just have it contort the sounds of the home office. #
  • Excited @artfagcity "Sound of Art" Kickstarter project now $513 over 10k goal, half a day before funding was to close. http://kck.st/92ElnD #
  • We replace one form of pollution with another. Details on "miserable hum of clean energy." http://is.gd/fOhAx #windfarm #sonicemminentdomain #
  • What's the word (aside from "ancient") for my feeling whenever I read an ebook that somehow, somewhere, there's a missing paragraph? #
  • Listening to new Rhys Chatham album on bus home from Music App Summit. Swabbing networked-media brainspace with monastic post-rock. #mel2010 #
  • Those protesters, it seems, aren't talking about digital privacy or tech-monarchic hegemony. Their concern: phone-induced cancer. #mel2010 #
  • Protesters outside #mel2010 with signs decrying "FCC/CTIA collusion." #
  • Music app, like funny, means different things to different people. Watch gearheads and novelties and content delivery share space. #mel2010 #
  • Bln.kr has interesting feedback-prodding engine, getting listener responses to musicians. #mel2010 #
  • The name of Dave Stewart's micropayment system appears to be "Famos" (no "u'). #mel2010 #
  • Dave Stewart introducing tiered/gradated micropayment system. #mel2010 #
  • disquiet: Q: "How long has your music app been in development?" A: "14 hours. Wait, what time is it? 15 hours." #mel2010 #
  • Q: "How long has your #musicapp been in development?" A: "14 hours. Wait, what time is it? 15 hours." #
  • .@rlainhart I'll keep an eye out for Rudess/Morph. I really dig his Hexatone, even if at times I feel like I'm playing a sonic RPG #musicapp in reply to rlainhart #
  • I guess Billboard calls its conferences "Summits" because "Show'n'Tell" lacks a certain gravitas. #musicapp #
  • Headed to Billboard Music App Summit; observe intersection of interactive tech, sound & that less frequent (until recently) factor: populism #
  • Would it be too much to ask that electric razors include information about the amplitude and key of their drones? #
  • RIP, Art Jarvinen (b. 1956), cofounder of California EAR Unit http://is.gd/fKK2S http://is.gd/fKK3P #
  • Much less chatter than expected in advance of tomorrow's Music App Summit. Anything there anyone's particularly looking forward to? #
  • ♫ Afternoon tune: industrial drone-craft from Tokyo-based Yasuo Akai http://is.gd/fKCW6 #
  • "Sound of Art" LP project by @artfagcity has 61 hours to get last 13.4% of its financial goal: http://kck.st/92ElnD #
  • Increasingly aware listening to music with earbuds like eating food only with your tongue, ignoring rest of your mouth @Direwires @Big_Pause #
  • Are earbuds and 128kbps streams worse for music (sonically) than AM radio, or just different? #
  • Reminders in tonight's Mad Men how lo-fi both television and telephony were in the 1960s. Which is to say, still slightly better than Skype. #
  • If he ends up joining the ad business, then Peggy's new-ish boyfriend, Mark, is my current vote for the series' Don DeLillo character. #
  • "See that? I kissed you and it got quiet." (From tonight's Mad Men episode, "Chinese Wall.") #
  • Love livemetallica.com concert-data detail: "first time in over 17 years…Breadfan…played in Sydney"; photo captions timed to the minute. #
  • Great. Bought bit.trip beat, and only later realized it doesn't work on the 2nd-gen iPod Touch. The iTunes store needs a generation filter. #
  • Video of @redefrecords visit to garage-record-store is like last scene of Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 if it was about LPs http://is.gd/fIByj #
  • "ambient tremors of unease," per A.O.Scott on @facebook film, means lurking online sinisterness not the Reznor/Ross score http://is.gd/fIAdP #
  • Plotting a proper Disquiet.com podcast — should I just host it at archive.org or do people have other suggestions? #
  • Motor on the Fisher Price Kick & Play is such a great example of rhythm as drone that if it didn't exist @vuzhmusic would have to invent it. #
  • "It's reality. Rough edges are good" Director to reality-TV star on debut Law & Order: Los Angeles episode (with Mark Rothko as deputy DA) #

Thomas Ankersmit Estonian Deep Listening (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Earlier this month on Twitter I joked that the new Neil Young album, Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois, is so packed with echo that it sounds “like he rented Pauline Oliveros & Stewart Dempster’s Deep Listening cave.” Shortly thereafter, Oliveros (aka @olivep) herself replied,

@disquiet If this is so then we have not received any rent money for Le Noise.

Well, based on a recent recording by Berlin/Amsterdam-based saxophonist Thomas Ankersmit, he can be added to the list of Deep Listening devotees. Earlier this year in the Estoian city of Tallinn, he filled a reverberant, abandoned seaplane hangar with echo upon echo of his solo horn (MP3).

[audio:http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/touchradio/Radio56/Radio56.mp3|titles=”Touch Radio 56 Hangar Performance”|artists=Thomas Ankersmit]

The performance was captured (not just as audio, but in the color photos above and below) by John Grzinich, on May 29 of this year. Writes Grzinich of the experience, at maaheli.ee:

We had the good fortune during the recent Tuned City pre-event, to spend some time in the historic Sea Plane Hanger currently under renovation in Tallinn. The idea of working in the Hangar was initiated by sculptor Lukas Kühne who happened to walk by the structure on an earlier visit to Tallinn and hear some echoes emanating from inside. The particular acoustic effect of this site slowly developed into the notion of a ”˜sonic landmark’ the general theme for Tuned City Tallinn 2011. While being a sonic landmark for us, the building is also a historic landmark on the national scale. It was commissioned by the last czar of Russia and built just before the communist revolution of 1917. The domes that make up the roof characterize a style of light freestanding concrete structures designed and built well before such forms were found in the modernist era. The fact that it survived two world wars and the soviet era is also rather remarkable. The hangar is now under renovation and will be turned into a Maritime Museum.

For the purposes of Tuned City, the unique arched dome structure of the hangar offered a great example of ”˜aural architecture”˜ with the possibility of artistic exploration and intervention.

It’s often said of live concerts, “You had to be there.” What’s essential about a performance such as Ankersmit’s is that it is so rich in place, so about place, than the recording carries the imprint of that place, is a record of that place.

Track originally posted at touchradio.org.uk. More on the Tallin event, which continues next year, at tunedcity.net.

More on Ankersmit at thomasankersmit.net.

Blurry Images from the Right Coast

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

As we know from William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, sometimes fuzzy images that you come upon courtesy of the Internet carry the greatest meaning, if only in terms of mystery.

The following two arrived in quick succession from my mother this evening, straight from her BlackBerry, with no additional information:

She and my father live on Long Island, and I knew they were headed to a concert that evening, so I guessed that the blurry shots of junkyard metal were from the performance of Magnus Lindberg‘s Kraft, which has three performances this week in Manhattan by the New York Philharmonic. (More on the dates at nyphil.org.) Though the work’s composition was completed a quarter century ago, this is its New York premiere. There’s a great video on youtube.com of Lindberg in which he talks about, among other things, the influence of Einstürzende Neubauten on Kraft:


 

In a PDF of program notes provided by the Philharmonic, some text from that video is transcribed:

I was living in Berlin in those days, and that was the time when the alternative music scene in Berlin was very strong,with a kind of post-punk music and groups like Einstürzende Neubauten. They had drills on stage, and they made an amazing noise with a kind of non-tonal pop music, and this aspect of it I found very fascinating. In a way, it was a shock for me to see that this kind of music was going on, and I was jealous about the sound — the impact of the sound and the huge forces they managed to put together. And I thought, “Why couldn’t we do this with the forces of the symphony orchestra, which has so much potential in different types of sound?”

After the concert, I received an email confirming my guess. Wish I could have been there.